Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more?

Suppresing in what way? That was polonisation?

Lwów was home to some very shameful events - for instance, the requirement for Ukrainians to take an oath of allegiance to Poland or be fired in the university there.

rather you and your bias is opposite to facts

There has been no forced polnization or russification.Noone was forced to change his name or religion.

Closing their schools, libraries and reading rooms would be one example, destroying their churches would be another. The Polish minister for Education stating that the aim of Polish policy should be "the transformation of the Commonwealth into Polish ethnic territory." would also be relevant. Strange how so much of that information has been removed from wikipedia by Polish editors, one might even conclude that they think there is something to hide.

I wonder if the fact that the Polonisation was so much more brutal in the east than it was in the west shows that Poles dislike their eastern neighbours more than their western ones.

Whats wrong with taking an oath to Poland, when you are a citizen. First you have to remember that 20 years between I and II WW were very volatile and neighbours of Poland along with preparations to war, lead agressive politic. The result of that was a mentality of besieged fortress. Polish politicians tried to show the unity of society in face of danger, sometimes they forced it. But one always have to remeber that Poland at that time was very young state, with agressive neighbours, who didn't helped particularly to make Polish society more open and tolerant.

At that difficult time minorities also didn't help very much. Every agressive move from Poland's neighbours was welkomed and supported. It resulted in resentful actions from Poland and that created vicious circle. There were very few people on both sides who proposed a constructive way out of this situation.

Absolute Truth. my grand grand -father who died in Poland in the First world war, sent to my grand-grand mother letter in which he wrote that Russian soldiers must protect and do not touch Cultural or any other values in Poland or any other country...

Which churches again? I think that I explained the situation of church in former Polish Kresy in previous post. Care to read them.

In the Chelm and Podlachia regions alone, in 1929 and 1930 59 churches were destroyed and 111 closed (and another 150 converted to RCC). Then in 1938 in those two regions nearly 150 more were destroyed. There were even protests about it in the Polish parliament!

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, to observe that those acts would "destroy in the souls of our non-united Orthodox brothers the very thought of any possible reunion."

There's a lot of truth in that.

One problem - Galicia was supposed to have considerable autonomy, free from such nonsense. As for taking an oath - well - when it's a deliberate provocative measure, there's everything wrong with that.


Ukrainians were hardly celebrating Russian moves in light of what happened!


The whole problem was that instead of working with the minorities, Poland often worked against them - to the point of alienating them completely.

Thanks for elaboration; interesting book. But I find your post a little lacking. Few sentences above this you can find reasons, why Polish authorities did that: Orthodox church was associated with tsarist government and its policy of russification. Although at time when these churches were destroyed, that was no longer true, you have to remember that attitudes, mentality doesn't change quickly. In such situations calm and time brings constructive ideas and discussion. I don't want to repeat myself, I stated in above post that relations between Poles and minorities were sometimes unjust, and difficult, but at the same time Poles are not the only one to blame.

There is no reason for you to make bias statements, without giving reasons for such situations (and they were more complicated than you make them seem like.


While "protecting cultural heritage and values" Russians apparently didn't think that Poles are it's bearers and didn't mind to kill them. Monuments are not enough, they forgot about human factor.

Tough.

Sorry that I nailed your lie about Poles not forcing Polonisation. Unfortunately we're now too far from the topic of this thread for me to safely continue this discussion here.

I simply wasn't aware of the scale of actions that Polish government took against Ukrainians. I also wouldn't use such strong words, as lie to somebody, who tries to have a constructive disscussion with you. I guess that you belong to that part of Polishforums community, who just can't mantain good quality conversation and start accusing/cursing/insult whenever they can. My bad I didn't realised this sooner, our disscussion would be shorter, so don't worry, I won't make the same mistake again.

You're most welcome to discuss that further but I won't do it here as it is off topic. Start another thread if you want me to participate in a discussion about that.

Aren't you the one-sided expert, Harry? Now read this.

The pre-war metropolis in Lwów and two suffragan bishopric in Stanisławów and Przemyśl had altogether 3615 churches and 2380 diocesan priests. There were similar numbers of nuns and monks. They were all incorporated into the Ortodox Church. The local Greco-Catholic churches were converted into storages, usually salt storages, as salt easily destroys the walls and interiors of buildings. The priests had to sign loyalty declarations. Those who refused were immediately arrested. Among them - priest Raczenko from Husiatyn ...

Andrej Szeptycki, even though he had dreamt about uniting the Easter churches, protested before the war against incorporation of the Orthodox Church to the Catholic Church by force. Now, the Orthodox Church, obedient to Stalin, did not have these problems with the Uniates. Fortunately, the metropolitan Szeptycki did not live to see it. He died on November 4, 1944 - just before the so-called the Unification Synod on March 5-10, 1945. It was set at the 350th anniversary of the Brześć Union. Under the huge pressure from NKVD the Grecko-Catholic hierarchy was forced to join the Orthodox Church. The metropolitan Józef Slipyj, his general vicar bishop Nikita Budko, bishop Mikołaj Czarnecki, bishop Hrehory Chomyszyn, and the coadjutor Jan Latyszewski were arrested on April 25, 1945. In March next year there was the trial in Kijów, where they were convicted to many years of gulag for treason and collaboration with Germans. In the same time the PRL authorities gave away bishop Józef Kocyłowski and his suffragan Hrehory £akota from Przemyśl to Soviet Union, after jailing them for one year.

Hrehory Chmyszyn died in gulag in unknown circumstances. Cardinal Józef Slipyj, considered the martyr of the Church, was drawn out of the gulag by the Pope Jan XXIII in 1962, after long negotiations with Soviet Union. He returned west after 18 years in gulags, and took againg his previous position in Rome.

- Jarosław Abramow Newerly, Granica Sokoła - quoting ks. prof. dr. Roman Dzwonkowski SAC, Przegląd Wschodni - the expert on history of Catholic Church in Soviet Union and of the sociology of the ethnic groups

Personal insults are no replacement for facts, do try to remember that.


Why bother: it is very clearly off topic for this thread and so can not be discussed even if I felt like doing that (and it in no way disproves that Polonisation was forced, which is how churches came up in the first place).

However, I would like to return to an earlier statement that I made about the fact that Polonisation was far more brutal in the east than in the west possibly showing that Poles dislike their eastern neighbours more than their western ones. I failed, of course, to take into account the massive scale of the crimes committed by the Polish nation against the inhabitants of the ‘recovered territories’. Poland only operated one concentration camp during its interbellum Polonisation campaign but operated several while ‘recovering’ those territories. And of course Poland only carried out limited ethnic cleansing in the east (Operation Wisla) and massive scale ethnic cleansing in the west. Perhaps this shows that Poles like their eastern neighbours more.

To the point where gravestones were used to rebuild Wroclaw.

Harry
Still Poles have a long way to catch up with leading states in the world. Few colonies, few millions people to exterminate some territorial additions, few prosecutions of religion minorities and Poles should be there along those democratic and liberal countries!

Germanics have used brutal force for centuries.They took lessons from Romans and uplifted it to new heights.At the end the student became better than his teacher and conquered him.Only Russians among Slavs created sth close to Imperium thanks to Byzantine heritage.

That doesn't prove anything either way. Gravestones were often used as building material after the war (I can think of flood defences in Wlodawa, a wall the main square in Sokolow, and a doorstep in Lublin off the top of my head).


An interesting observation but one which is entirely off topic.

What's wrong with taking an oath to the German Empire, when you are a citizen? :)

I was born in England and my father was Polish, born in Upper Silesia. He fought in the Polish army in 1939. Later both he and his brother were conscripted into the German army. He would have agreed with your wife.

Polish people are special, as a pole myself I am very proud. Russia has done much more pain to Poland then Germany has. It started 1000 years ago when the Slavics broke up into countries, Poland chose Christianity and Russia chose Orthodox which other Slavs hated because they all chose Christianity. 200 years in around 1250 The Teutonic Order was founded, on Poland's request they asked The Teutons to destroy Lithuania and other non-catholic people. in 1410 we faced the Teutons ourselves and won a victory forming the Polish-Lithunaian Commonwealth, 100 years later we entered our Golden age which Swedes, Cossacks and Russians tried to take. Poland was brutally weakened by the Russians and the Cossacks. in 1612 Poland launched a invasion on Russia which had almost destroyed Russia entirely until the Cossacks rebelled in Ukraine we ceased campaigns in Russia and focused on the Cossacks. We won the war with very high casualties, that period is named the deluge. when we entered the 18th century we were so weakened that our armies were literally destroyed by a thought so we were torn apart by Prussia, Austria and Russia. As you can see we were actually erased from the map for more then 100 years. Late in the 19th century we regained our freedom with Napoleon but again Stalin had launched a invasion on Poland and executed 22 thousand Polish officers at Katyn we managed to win the war with more then 1 million casualties then we entered WW2 which we did not stand more then a year however we took great part of the Battle for Britain. Although we were part of the Allies side we actually lost the war because 1/3 of our people perished 38% of Poland was burnt to the ground and we were secretly sold into the Soviet union which we then had communism in Poland. In 1989 when the Berlin wall fell we were freed from the Soviets. So all this pain by Russians is ridiculous also this is probably half of all the wars! In 2010 our president Lech died in a plane crash while trying to get to Smolensk for a memorial for the 22 thousand Polish officers.

Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more???
This one dislike Russia more then Denmark! and likes Germany as he lives close to Germany-Poland border and drives through Germany for his weekly splash in the aquaparque so has acquired likeness for Germany and its people .

Russia and it's not really even that close

You are sure this is the correct order of events?


Not after Nazi Mothers and Fathers.

This is difficult question.
Russians did more bad things to us, more victims, longer occupation but in the end they just want to govern over us. I know many Russian people

and they don't hate us.
On the other hand does anybody have any doubts that Germans wanted us to disappear from the face of earth during WWII and would have done it

if they had the time. I am not at all sure they don't feel like this now.

Never met one German yet that wanted to do such a thing to Poland.

Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the German sense of shame over WW2 before making such statements.

Funny :)

Sorry I was referring to the joke that Polonius3 shared in one his posts.

Joachim Fest, a known German historian, better say expert,
who studied Germany's nazi past , expressed the
following opinion about Germany : In fact nothing has changed,
simply there is a lack of a suitable demagogue with appropriate
qualifications.................